FBI Raids Home of Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan

>This is obvious political retribution by the outgoing administration against Polymarket for providing a market that correctly called the 2024 presidential election

I don't even understand what the conspiracy theory is here. Why would that be something the Biden administration would seek retribution for? And even it were, how would they possibly achieve it before the new administration takes office?

I'm also confused, but I'd imagine that if Trump lost the election and betting sentiment on polymarket predicted strongly that Trump would win, it could be used as further "proof" that fraud occurred and that the democrats stole the election.

Polymarket probably thinks that the Biden administration is angry with them for showing how the population truly feels as all other sources are obviously corrupt /s

Polymarket is crypto adjacent, and the current administration has been going against the whole crypto ecosystem. I don't think it's just about predicting that Trump would win.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/print/operation-choke-point-2-0-...

The conspiracy theory is that Polymarket was rigged by nefarious forces to promote Donald Trump. It was widely promulgated in the mainstream press* leading up to the election. If you view Polymarket as an illegitimate tool used to help put a dictator in the White House, not surprising the the party being being replaced would attack it.

* E.g. the New Yorker, "Polymarket has seen a recent surge in pro-Trump election bets. Is it the movement of a rational market or a concerted campaign?" or Newsweek, "Polymarket Prediction Platform Possibly Manipulated to Favor Trump"

So why not raid the corporate offices too? Why, out of all of the people and organizations involved, just the CEO?

The FBI is quite good at serving multiple warrants in multiple locations at the same time when pursuing conspiracies. Presumably, in the scenario where they are the conspiracy, they could do just as well.

It doesn't seem like a great conspiracy theory to explain what actually happened.

Yeah, it doesn't make much sense. I think these are the (tenuous) claims:

- Many in the "crypto community" have perceive the Biden administration as hostile to it (Polymarket uses Polygon crypto).

- Peter Thiel is an investor in Polymarket. Thiel backed Trump in '16 and is often Republican aligned. Additionally, JD Vance once worked for Thiel. Thiel was a (very) major funder of Vance's senate election campaign.

- Polymarket's markets predicted Trump to win. This, to me, is the biggest stretch of all the conspiracy type stuff. But I guess it goes, "You put your thumb on the scales to show Trump was going to win. <...some causal chain of events...> We lost. Now we're going to punish you."

My guess is that it's as straightforward as: many bettors on Polymarket are U.S. citizens. Polymarket knows this and in all likelihood facilitates this, maintaining the thinnest possible veneer of plausible deniability. While betting on U.S. elections by U.S. bettors is apparently legal [1], it still requires market makers to submit to some registration process. That requirement has not been fulfilled by Polymarket. Also, in 2022 Polymarket settled a case with the CFTC for operating an unregistered derivatives market [2]. Who knows, it might just be related to a violation of that settlement?

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/election-bett...

[2] https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8478-22

It’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s a barely coded message to the next administration to pull on the FBI’s leash and/or push for legalization in the US.

“Political retribution by the outgoing administration” = “I’m the enemy of your enemy”. “Correctly called the 2024 presidential election” = “I’m flattering you on your glorious victory over our shared foe, now hook a brother up.”

Why not just the CEO if it the goal is just for show and to intimidate?